Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scutum (Sct)  ·  Contains:  PK020-00.1
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Abell 45 The Wagon Wheel (and by chance Sh2 55), Jerry Yesavage
Powered byPixInsight

Abell 45 The Wagon Wheel (and by chance Sh2 55)

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

Another obscure Abell. This is processed exactly as I normally process my Sharpless2 Images. Totally by chance, Sh2 55 is also here (A two-Fer).

Nice discussion:

There is very little written about Abell 45 (PK 020-00 1, PN G020.2-00.6) located in the southern constellation of Scutum. It is a special planetary nebula in that its appearance mostly comes from ionized nitrogen (NII) with much less hydrogen (hydrogen-alpha) and no oxygen (OIII). It thus becomes problematic to display this object, since both NII and H-a emissions are red. Abell 45 looks like a wheel with spokes. Hence, I took the liberty of labeling it the "Wagonwheel Planetary Nebula". It is 5-6′ in diameter.

From: https://astrodonimaging.com/gallery/abell-45-in-scutum/

On Sh2 55 from Galaxymap:

This tiny HII region, also called LBN 73, may be part of the Scutum supershell. Sharpless concludes that it is ionised by BD -11 4665. Neither Sharpless nor SIMBAD give a class for this star. The dark nebula immediately below Sh 2-55 is LDN 412. [Note, in this image the rotation is 180 DEG, so the LDN is Above].

Sh 2-55 is near a large nebular region in hydrogen-alpha that appears to mark the main boundary of the Scutum Supershell. [That is why the whole image is Red I assume].

GENERAL NOTE ON ABELL (and other) PLANETARY NEBULA>>>>>>>>>>>>>

From Wikipedia:

The Abell Catalog of Planetary Nebulae was created in 1966 by George O. Abell and was composed of 86 entries thought to be planetary nebulae that were collected from discoveries, about half by Albert George Wilson and the rest by Abell, Robert George Harrington, and Rudolph Minkowski. All were discovered before August 1955 as part of the National Geographic Society – Palomar Observatory Sky Survey on photographic plates created with the 48-inch (1.2 m) Samuel Oschin telescope at Mount Palomar. Four were later rejected as not being planetaries: Abell 11 (reflection nebula), Abell 32 (red plate flaw), Abell 76 (ring galaxy PGC 85185), and Abell 85 (supernova remnant CTB 1 and noted as possibly such in Abell's 1966 paper). Another three were also not included in the Strasbourg-ESO Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae (SEC): Abell 9, Abell 17 (red plate flaw), and Abell 64. Planetaries on the list are best viewed with a large aperture telescope (e.g. 18-inch (0.46 m)) and an OIII filter.

It turns out to my surprise most of these are visible with my Stellarvue 130mm (5-inch) SVX.

Bottom line there are 79 imagable Abell Nebula of which I have imaged 59 or 75% (half-way point Feb 6 2021 and 3/4 point May 22 2021).

This is my collection:

Planetary Nebula (Abell)

These are sorted by number and behind the Abell's are other miscellaneous PNs that I have imaged... I have a list of the 100 brightest.

This is Jerry Macon's outstanding Abell Collection:

Jerry Macon's Abell Collection

These are some useful Abell relevant sites:

Color and IMHO Best Filter Information

Images by Season and More Filter information in German

Comments